We show the numerical applicability of a multiresolution method based on harmonic splines on the 3-dimensional ball which allows the regularized recovery of the harmonic part of the Earth's mass density distribution out of different types of gravity data, e.g. different radial derivatives of the potential, at various positions which need not be located on a common sphere. This approximated harmonic density can be combined with its orthogonal anharmonic complement, e.g. determined out of the splitting function of free oscillations, to an approximation of the whole mass density function. The applicability of the presented tool is demonstrated by several test calculations based on simulated gravity values derived from EGM96. The method yields a multiresolution in the sense that the localization of the constructed spline basis functions can be increased which yields in combination with more data a higher resolution of the resulting spline. Moreover, we show that a locally improved data situation allows a highly resolved recovery in this particular area in combination with a coarse approximation elsewhere which is an essential advantage of this method, e.g. compared to polynomial approximation.

The inverse problem of recovering the Earth's density distribution from data of the first or second derivative of the gravitational potential at satellite orbit height is discussed for a ball-shaped Earth. This problem is exponentially ill-posed. In this paper a multiscale regularization technique using scaling functions and wavelets constructed for the corresponding integro-differential equations is introduced and its numerical applications are discussed. In the numerical part the second radial derivative of the gravitational potential at 200 km orbitheight is calculated on a point grid out of the NASA/GSFC/NIMA Earth Geopotential Model (EGM96). Those simulated derived data out of SGG (satellite gravity gradiometry) satellite measurements are taken for convolutions with the introduced scaling functions yielding a multiresolution analysis of harmonic density variations in the Earth's crust. Moreover, the noise sensitivity of the regularization technique is analyzed numerically.

The thesis is concerned with the modelling of ionospheric current systems and induced magnetic fields in a multiscale framework. Scaling functions and wavelets are used to realize a multiscale analysis of the function spaces under consideration and to establish a multiscale regularization procedure for the inversion of the considered operator equation. First of all a general multiscale concept for vectorial operator equations between two separable Hilbert spaces is developed in terms of vector kernel functions. The equivalence to the canonical tensorial ansatz is proven and the theory is transferred to the case of multiscale regularization of vectorial inverse problems. As a first application, a special multiresolution analysis of the space of square-integrable vector fields on the sphere, e.g. the Earth’s magnetic field measured on a spherical satellite’s orbit, is presented. By this, a multiscale separation of spherical vector-valued functions with respect to their sources can be established. The vector field is split up into a part induced by sources inside the sphere, a part which is due to sources outside the sphere and a part which is generated by sources on the sphere, i.e. currents crossing the sphere. The multiscale technqiue is tested on a magnetic field data set of the satellite CHAMP and it is shown that crustal field determination can be improved by previously applying our method. In order to reconstruct ionspheric current systems from magnetic field data, an inversion of the Biot-Savart’s law in terms of multiscale regularization is defined. The corresponding operator is formulated and the singular values are calculated. Based on the konwledge of the singular system a regularzation technique in terms of certain product kernels and correponding convolutions can be formed. The method is tested on different simulations and on real magnetic field data of the satellite CHAMP and the proposed satellite mission SWARM.

The article is concerned with the modelling of ionospheric current systems from induced magnetic fields measured by satellites in a multiscale framework. Scaling functions and wavelets are used to realize a multiscale analysis of the function spaces under consideration and to establish a multiscale regularization procedure for the inversion of the considered vectorial operator equation. Based on the knowledge of the singular system a regularization technique in terms of certain product kernels and corresponding convolutions can be formed. In order to reconstruct ionospheric current systems from satellite magnetic field data, an inversion of the Biot-Savart's law in terms of multiscale regularization is derived. The corresponding operator is formulated and the singular values are calculated. The method is tested on real magnetic field data of the satellite CHAMP and the proposed satellite mission SWARM.

SST (satellite-to-satellite tracking) and SGG (satellite gravity gradiometry) provide data that allows the determination of the first and second order radial derivative of the earth's gravitational potential on the satellite orbit, respectively. The modeling of the gravitational potential from such data is an exponentially ill-posed problem that demands regularization. In this paper, we present the numerical studies of an approach, investigated in [24] and [25], that reconstructs the potential with spline smoothing. In this case, spline smoothing is not just an approximation procedure but it solves the underlying compact operator equation of the SST-problem and the SGG-problem. The numerical studies in this paper are performed for a simplified geometrical scenario with simulated data, but the approach is designed to handle first or second order radial derivative data on a real satellite orbit.

We introduce splines for the approximation of harmonic functions on a 3-dimensional ball. Those splines are combined with a multiresolution concept. More precisely, at each step of improving the approximation we add more data and, at the same time, reduce the hat-width of the used spline basis functions. Finally, a convergence theorem is proved. One possible application, that is discussed in detail, is the reconstruction of the Earth´s density distribution from gravitational data obtained at a satellite orbit. This is an exponentially ill-posed problem where only the harmonic part of the density can be recovered since its orthogonal complement has the potential 0. Whereas classical approaches use a truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) with the well-known disadvantages like the non-localizing character of the used spherical harmonics and the bandlimitedness of the solution, modern regularization techniques use wavelets allowing a localized reconstruction via convolutions with kernels that are only essentially large in the region of interest. The essential remaining drawback of a TSVD and the wavelet approaches is that the integrals (i.e. the inner product in case of a TSVD and the convolution in case of wavelets) are calculated on a spherical orbit, which is not given in reality. Thus, simplifying modelling assumptions, that certainly include a modelling error, have to be made. The splines introduced here have the important advantage, that the given data need not be located on a sphere but may be (almost) arbitrarily distributed in the outer space of the Earth. This includes, in particular, the possibility to mix data from different satellite missions (different orbits, different derivatives of the gravitational potential) in the calculation of the Earth´s density distribution. Moreover, the approximating splines can be calculated at varying resolution scales, where the differences for increasing the resolution can be computed with the introduced spline-wavelet technique.

This paper provides a brief overview of two linear inverse problems concerned with the determination of the Earth’s interior: inverse gravimetry and normal mode tomography. Moreover, a vector spline method is proposed for a combined solution of both problems. This method uses localised basis functions, which are based on reproducing kernels, and is related to approaches which have been successfully applied to the inverse gravimetric problem and the seismic traveltime tomography separately.

The mathematical formulation of many physical problems results in the task of inverting a compact operator. The only known sensible solution technique is regularization which poses a severe problem in itself. Classically one dealt with deterministic noise models and required both the knowledge of smoothness of the solution function and the overall error behavior. We will show that we can guarantee an asymptotically optimal regularization for a physically motivated noise model under no assumptions for the smoothness and rather weak assumptions on the noise behavior which can mostly obtained out of two input data sets. An application to the determination of the gravitational field out of satellite data will be shown.

Nowadays one of the major objectives in geosciences is the determination of the gravitational field of our planet, the Earth. A precise knowledge of this quantity is not just interesting on its own but it is indeed a key point for a vast number of applications. The important question is how to obtain a good model for the gravitational field on a global scale. The only applicable solution - both in costs and data coverage - is the usage of satellite data. We concentrate on highly precise measurements which will be obtained by GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady State Ocean Circulation Explorer, launch expected 2006). This satellite has a gradiometer onboard which returns the second derivatives of the gravitational potential. Mathematically seen we have to deal with several obstacles. The first one is that the noise in the different components of these second derivatives differs over several orders of magnitude, i.e. a straightforward solution of this outer boundary value problem will not work properly. Furthermore we are not interested in the data at satellite height but we want to know the field at the Earth's surface, thus we need a regularization (downward-continuation) of the data. These two problems are tackled in the thesis and are now described briefly. Split Operators: We have to solve an outer boundary value problem at the height of the satellite track. Classically one can handle first order side conditions which are not tangential to the surface and second derivatives pointing in the radial direction employing integral and pseudo differential equation methods. We present a different approach: We classify all first and purely second order operators which fulfill that a harmonic function stays harmonic under their application. This task is done by using modern algebraic methods for solving systems of partial differential equations symbolically. Now we can look at the problem with oblique side conditions as if we had ordinary i.e. non-derived side conditions. The only additional work which has to be done is an inversion of the differential operator, i.e. integration. In particular we are capable to deal with derivatives which are tangential to the boundary. Auto-Regularization: The second obstacle is finding a proper regularization procedure. This is complicated by the fact that we are facing stochastic rather than deterministic noise. The main question is how to find an optimal regularization parameter which is impossible without any additional knowledge. However we could show that with a very limited number of additional information, which are obtainable also in practice, we can regularize in an asymptotically optimal way. In particular we showed that the knowledge of two input data sets allows an order optimal regularization procedure even under the hard conditions of Gaussian white noise and an exponentially ill-posed problem. A last but rather simple task is combining data from different derivatives which can be done by a weighted least squares approach using the information we obtained out of the regularization procedure. A practical application to the downward-continuation problem for simulated gravitational data is shown.